For North High, brush tars just and unjust alike

I spoke to some of what we might consider the “good kids” at North High School and they told me how the so-called “bad apples,” the ones who allegedly beat up on one another on Friday and then participated in an ominous confrontation with police officers on Monday, do not represent the entire school.

I get it. I really do.

But after mulling it over for a day or two, I'm not sure whether either the good kids or the bad kids get it, and perhaps it is because we are not telling them the truth.

We are great at filling them with the ideals of the American experience — justice, equal rights and equal protection under the law, but we are less adept at teaching them how to deal with the realities of their day to day lives.

It is not the American ideal that young people should be viewed as inherently bad just because they are from the inner-city, but that is how they are often viewed

They encounter it often when their sports teams leave the comfort of their inner-city facilities to play in the suburbs.

They feel it when after every altercation, such as this current North High incident, the first response by adults is to turn their schools into prisons by hiring and deploying more police or security guards.

They see it when city school administrators take away, or suspend their privileges, because of an incident at another school.

They hear it in the voices of teachers who openly talk of being afraid of students they should be teaching and mentoring.

Confirming this essential fact would make you a more legitimate mentor; make you more believable when you tell them that while life can sometimes be unfair, that unfairness is not what matters most.

What matters most is how they respond to the slights, the wrongs and the mistrust that come their way.

As a freshman at North High, Kassandra Rivera's response was to get into fights, which led to suspensions. That led to bad grades, which led to being passed over when teachers picked students to attend college fairs.

Instead of seeing this as a reflection on her lack of commitment to education, she viewed it as another slight, which put her in a bad mood, and ultimately landed her in another fight.

Yet this year, she is the secretary of her senior class, and has an acceptance letter from Rhode Island College. Her turn-around happened because she changed her behavior; changed her social group. She began making better decisions in her life.

As adults we should constantly advocate for a more just society, but in the interim we have an obligation to help our young people survive the unfairness of the one in which they live.

Yes, Kassandra, it is not right that the entire North High student body is panned for the behavior of a few of its students, but behavior has consequences.

In our society, the behavior of an individual impacts not only himself, but his family, his school, his friends and his community. Just as how your success will be shared by your family, your school and your community.

There is a lot we don't know and should know about the North High incident.

Perhaps the police reports, as some have said, didn't accurately portray exactly how things went down.

In fact, we know that sometimes the police can be a little creative, or untruthful in their reports. Such as the 2009 case of Worcester Officer Jesus Candelaria who detailed his actions during arrests of drug suspects, but a video later suggested he wasn't even there during the actual arrests.

But what matters most here is that our kids should know that it is never a good idea to argue with a police officer, no matter how right they think they are or how wrong they think the police are.

It might not be fair, but nothing good usually happens to those who do.